Besides this public calamity, which darkened the whole city for a time, Friend Hopper shared the common lot of humanity in the sad experiences of private life.  Several of his children died at that attractive age, when the bud of infancy is blooming into childhood.  Relatives and friends crossed the dark river to the unknown shore.  On New Year’s day, 1797, his mother departed from this world at fifty-six years old.  In 1818, his father died at seventy-five years of age.  His physical vigor was remarkable.  When he had weathered seventy winters, he went to visit his eldest son, and being disappointed in meeting the stage to return, as he expected, he walked home, a distance of twenty-eight miles.  At that advanced age, he could rest one hand on his cane and the other on a fence, and leap over as easily as a boy.  He had long flowing black hair, which fell in ringlets on his shoulders; and when he died, it was merely sprinkled with gray.  When his private accounts were examined after his decease, they revealed the fact that he had secretly expended hundreds of dollars in paying the debts of poor people, or redeeming their furniture when it was attached.

But though many dear ones dropped away from his side, as Friend Isaac moved onward in his pilgrimage, many remained to sustain and cheer him.  Among his wife’s brothers, his especial friend was John Tatum, who lived in the vicinity of his native village.  This worthy man had great sympathy with the colored people, and often sheltered the fugitives whom his brother-in-law had rescued.  He was remarkable for his love of peace; always preferring to suffer wrong rather than dispute.  The influence of this pacific disposition upon others was strikingly illustrated in the case of two of his neighbors.  They were respectable people, in easy circumstances, and the families found much pleasure in frequent intercourse with each other.  But after a few years, one of the men deemed that an intentional affront had been offered him by the other.  Instead of good-natured frankness on the occasion, he behaved in a sullen manner, which provoked the other, and the result was that eventually neither of them would speak when they met.  Their fields joined, and when they were on friendly terms, the boundary was marked by a fence, which they alternately repaired.  But when there was feud between them, neither of them was willing to mend the other’s fence.  So each one built a fence for himself, leaving a very narrow strip of land between, which in process of time came to be generally known by the name of Devil’s Lane, in allusion to the bad temper that produced it.  A brook formed another portion of the boundary between their farms, and was useful to both of them.  But after they became enemies, if a freshet occurred, each watched an opportunity to turn the water on the other’s land, by which much damage was mutually done.  They were so much occupied with injuring each other in every possible way, that they neglected